WAKR Dumps The Bird

Rubber City Radio standards/news WAKR/1590 Akron has sent the Dial-Global (formerly Westwood One) “Adult Standards” format packing, at least during weekdays.

The station has announced a “live and local” lineup of on-air personalities for its music hours which used to be covered by the satellite. That lineup apparently starts today. Among them – former WKDD/then-96.5 program director Chuck Collins, who is now heard on WAKR in mid-mornings.

Collins calls the station’s new local lineup “a new kind of WAKR”, and apologized to listeners for any glitches as the station “goes back to West Market Street”. Despite that mention, what we heard of Collins’ first show was smooth.

Collins announced that station veteran Bob Allen will take over middays – he’s already been heard doing a music shift in afternoon drive, and has been already been in middays hosting the WAKR Noon News block. WAKR also stays in-house for afternoon drive with Tim Daugherty, the long-time Rubber City voice also heard mornings on sister rock WONE/97.5.

WAKR’s Ray Horner continues in morning drive, and the station will continue as the local affiliate of the Cleveland Indians, Browns and Cavaliers.

We don’t know what they’ll do in the nighttime and weekend hours not covered by sports yet, though we’ll assume non-weekday hours will still be in the standards format, and either locally automated or still with the satellite service.

Though the new lineup is being presented as “live and local”, we’d have to assume, for example, that Daugherty isn’t burning the clock candle on both ends by doing the WAKR afternoon shift live.

We alluded to Collins’ hiring at Rubber City in an item in mid-July, and also alluded to the end of weekday satellite programming on one local station around the same time, though we hadn’t connected the dots until hearing Collins on WAKR today…